'Owen, are you there?' she cried, but there was no answer. 'Owen!' she repeated in a louder voice, but still there was nothing. Then she went to the door and found the chair just as she and Susannah had left it, but with no trace of her brother save the greatcoat which was lying on the back. 'Did you hear no noise?' asked the girl, after listening to her story. 'No; nothing at all. I just came down because I had finished what I had to do upstairs!' And Susannah added, on telling her tale, 'the chair, when I looked, was exactly as we had placed it.' The alarm once given, the neighbours lost no time in making a thorough search of both town and country for some distance round, even of the most unlikely spots. Ponds and wells were dragged, ditches examined, outhouses explored; though _why_ anyone should wish to hide a harmless old cripple in any of these places, nobody stopped to ask, still less how it could have been done in broad daylight. But in spite of the thorough nature of the hunt, which did not cease even during a sharp thunderstorm, and went on all that night and the next day, neither then nor later was any trace ever found of Owen Parfitt. * * * * * As far as we know, nothing further was done about the matter for nearly fifty years, when some gentlemen happened to hear the story and were interested in it. They sought out all the old people in the town who had known the Parfitts and questioned them as to what had happened. Of course, the worst of this kind of evidence is that no kind of notes had been taken down at the time, and also that the love of astonishing their hearers by wonderful details which never occurred is a great temptation to many. On the whole, however, the witnesses in the inquiry into Owen Parfitt's disappearance seem to have been more truthful than usual. Susannah Snook, the last person living to see the old man, told her tale as it has been already set down, and her account was closely borne out by that given by another old woman as far as her own knowledge went. Then followed some men, whose clothes had been made by Parfitt as long as he had been able to work, and who had helped in the search for him. One of these declared that Owen was 'neither a very good nor a very bad man, but was said sometimes to have a very violent temper.' Yet, even if this was correct, it does not throw much light on the mystery.